Club music and Go-Go met up in Baltimore last Saturday night, October 26th, and had a good ol’ time bonding over their regional beats. “Beats & Breaks: Exploring Maryland’s Diverse Music Traditions” was one of many Free Fall Baltimore events, sponsored by Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts. The legendary Arch Social Club hosted the event, which fit right in to the spot’s reputation for supporting arts, entertainment, and civic engagement.
In this region spanning the Baltimore to DC/Prince George’s County corridor — with love to party people of Maryland’s less talked about areas — fans of each genre come with their own local cultures, sayings, dances, styles, neighborhoods, communities, and attitudes. Unity of the area’s Black communities and cultures proved to be an overarching theme of the event, reflected in the historical backgrounds offered by Torreantoe Smalls of Baltimore’s TORKO ENT. and Kato Hammond of Prince George’s County’s Take Me Out to the Go-Go Media (TMOTTGoGo), as well as in hosting remarks by Tahira Mahdi (a.k.a. “99”) of TMOTTGoGo.
With musical demonstrations by DJ Sincere, Torreantoe Smalls provided a very thorough history of Baltimore club music, highlighting the ambassadors of the genre who helped it gain national and international fan bases. While there was vigorous seat dancing happening to hits such as “Doo Doo Brown,” “How You Wanna Carry It,” “Hey You Knuckleheads,” “Watch Out for the Big Girl,” the proven get-em-on-the-floor hit of the night was Rod Lee’s “Dance My Pain Away.”
After his presentation on Baltimore club, Torreantoe Smalls took his place at the drum set on stage, where Baltimore’s own Musicians Paradise Band was gearing up to assist historian/author/musician Kato Hammond run down the origins of go-go music and Go-Go culture. His discussion of Go-Go culminated with an awesome demonstration of how go-go music is created in the moment, simply using drums, bass, keyboards, and, of course, the lead rapper. Though his recent endeavors lean more journalistic with electronic media, Kato Hammond is no stranger to the stage, having grown up in theater and go-go, and a musician’s resume that includes Little Benny & the Maters and Proper Utensils.
TORKO ENT. certified its team as a one-stop shop for music, boasting a band, a DJ, and a leader who can go from scholarly on the mic to crankin’ on the drums. We caught a bit of the band’s singer rehearsing, and although she implored the crowd to “pay me no mind,” we can report that it’s absolutely worth it to catch her performing with the band. According to the Facebook page of Musicians Paradise, they often perform at Arch Social Club and at City View Bar & Grill on Friday nights.
There’s a 16-minute recap video of the event (see below), but this show should definitely be taken on the road. As Arch Social Community Network’s Denise Griffin Johnson said when it was over, “Let’s do this again!”
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